Benny and Dana:You came to our website the other day and proceeded to put us down and call us foolish. I am sure that this was in Christ's love you did this, and you were only concerned for our souls and wanting to save us from our sins.

When moral and spiritual ideas were handed down via oral tradition, they could evolve with the cultural and technological context in which they existed. Some stories were repeated often around the fire while others, less favored, eventually faded into the hazy past. Uninteresting details might be omitted by a storyteller, others elaborated. New implications might be extracted—rules, roles, and ideas about the natural world--depending on the needs of the era. The gods themselves matured.

One of my beloved sisters was thoughtful enough to deposit on Brother Sam's mental linoleum the following inspirational message tracked in from the Web. Instead of shit-canning it like the rest of the bilge that washes anew across the bow of the 700-foot floating studio and transmitter MV Sister Singleton (from which broadcasts the 100,000kw pirate station the Voice of the Ozarks as it plies international waters), I felt led of God to annotate that motherfucker in his name. God did the actual analysis; I just took it down word for word.

This website is pathetic...You bash pastors for asking money for their religion and you have a donate button right on the front page...

If you left Christianity and have no religion then there is no reason to recruit anyone else... what is it going to win you? A darker non-existence when you die? What then, if you "express" your non-christianity then you get to be some kind of spooky ghost that floats around the earth after you die?

The following is an article from my blog 'The Deist Fool' that I wrote a while back. I added some more info and personal commentary.

Andy Sachs: That's not what I... no, that was different. I didn't have a choice.Miranda Priestly: No, no, you chose. You chose to get ahead. You want this life. Those choices are necessary. - The Devil Wears Prada

We've all heard that said before. How imitation is the best form of flattery.

In the Buybull (Gee, finally spelled that right.) we are told Christians aught to "come out from among them" and that Christianity is pure and to avoid the world. Yet many of the aspects of Christianity are influenced by worldly traits and activities.

Max Blumenthal heads deep into the land of Sarah Palin, reporting from inside her longtime church, interviewing her friends and enemies, and putting her spokespeople on the defensive about the theology behind her extreme conservatism.

Like all of you on this website, I am an ex-Christian. I was raised Roman Catholic my entire life and even was confirmed into the church a few years back. During that time though, I was beginning to question my faith. Since I was born I was always told different things that contradict religion itself. Some priests would say "God is in everything, if you do good things God is with you and if you do bad things you have allied yourself with the devil" or "God makes a path that you follow and there is no such thing as free-will, there is only good and evil. Really? So me renouncing my faith was the devil talking? ‘Cause it sounds like I am making the decision, not the devil. What I am trying to get at is that religion assumes too much and that there are many fellow ex-Christian brothers and sisters out there who have assumed too much as well. I am of course talking about the assumption of atheism.

"I know at the end of the day putting this in God's hands, the right thing for America will be done, at the end of the day on Nov. 4."

"I can feel the power of prayer, and that strength that is provided through our prayer warriors across this nation. And I so appreciate it."

"When we hear along the rope lines that people are interceding for us and praying for us, it's our reminder to do the same, to put this all in God's hands, to seek his perfect will for this nation, and to of course seek his wisdom and guidance in putting this nation back on the right track."

Jonathan Haidt is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He studies the emotional and intuitive foundations of morality. His current work is based on the idea that morality is a team sport and that political liberals don't understand the game the other side is playing. He is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis and is currently writing The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.

In the Bible we read how God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice Issac his son. Of course God stopped him, but that is beside the point. God actually asked one of HIS followers to kill his own son as a test of faithfulness. Sick, just plain sick. What is even sicker is that Abraham was willing to do it. This is the same God who supposedly ordered the genocide of races who practiced ritual human sacrifice.

In the Bible we read how God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice Issac his son. Of course God stopped him, but that is beside the point. God actually asked one of HIS followers to kill his own son as a test of faithfulness. Sick, just plain sick. What is even sicker is that Abraham was willing to do it. This is the same God who supposedly ordered the genocide of races who practiced ritual human sacrifice.

I posted on this site about a year ago looking for people to share their stories about leaving their marriages at or around the same time they began questioning their faith. Now, 25 interviews, 7 states and 1-year later, the film has been shot and we are in post-production now -- working on cutting 60 hours down to 90 minutes or less. It has been quite an adventure.

The film is called Divorcing God, and the official movie site is www.divorcinggod.org. The film will be complete in December.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.

I Googled 'Catholic lies' to see what would come up ... and here I am, with you. I was reared catholic and ditched the insanity of catholicism as soon as I could. why? well, if the teachers of Christianity taught by slapping the crap out of kids and kicking them (a priest in high school almost broke my shin bone), I wasn't going to be much of a student.

OK, so how many of you have been in a discussion with a Christian and you get so some point where their religion simply does not makes any sense? Oh, of course; like all the time. Things such as, how could a good and loving god send his children to eternal torment? Or, how could a loving god order his chosen people to commit genocide on a regular basis? Or to flip it around, how could a loving god allow someone else to commit genocide on his own chosen people, aka the Holocaust? How could a good god condone slavery? How exactly does killing things, animals or Jesus, make this god happy when we do things he does not like? That is just weird.

Something has occurred to me as I am following the race for the American presidency. Jesus would be ashamed of the Christian right -- straight up mortified by them. Jesus (if he even existed as he supposedly reported in the bible), was all about selflessness and discarding worldly pursuits to help out his fellow mankind, no matter how lowly that person was.

There is no middle-ground. Either the Bible is the Word of God or it isn't. Here's why the "relative to the time" argument falls apart as a justification for the moral and scientific problems of the Bible.

A Moberly principal and pastor has been charged with second-degree child molestation after allegedly taking a 16-year-old female student to a Columbia motel and fondling her in May.

The misdemeanor charge against James M. Wilson, 42, was filed Oct. 9 in Boone County Circuit Court. Wilson is the principal of Terrill Road Christian Academy and also a pastor, according to probable cause statement prepared by Columbia police Detective Latisha Stroer.

As a former fundamentalist, I'd like to call you on what you are doing.

The media has found you "opaque" about your religion. Why? You have not been honest about the most important thing about you: the fact that you are a born-again charismatic on a mission from God. Most people who have never been entrenched in the subculture of fundamentalist Christianity may not understand what this really means, but I do. Like you, I was raised in the Assemblies of God and I was a zealous part of the Jesus Movement. Like you, my life was consumed with seeking God's will for my life and awaiting the imminent return of Jesus.

As a former fundamentalist, I'd like to call you on what you are doing.

The media has found you "opaque" about your religion. Why? You have not been honest about the most important thing about you: the fact that you are a born-again charismatic on a mission from God. Most people who have never been entrenched in the subculture of fundamentalist Christianity may not understand what this really means, but I do. Like you, I was raised in the Assemblies of God and I was a zealous part of the Jesus Movement. Like you, my life was consumed with seeking God's will for my life and awaiting the imminent return of Jesus.

I have been viewing the posts on this site for a couple of months now. I feel very connected to the people and the stories that I read on here. I would say that I am a spiritual person that leans towards humanitarian thinking (I have not studied it much) and more agnostic than atheist. I was going to a United Church of Christ church and loved the spiritualism there, but not the push to be a liberal activist.

The pastor whose prayer Sarah Palin says helped her to become governor of Alaska founded his ministry with a witch hunt against a Kenyan woman whom he accused of causing car accidents through demonic spells.

At a speech at the WasillaAssembly of God on June 8 this year, Palin described how Thomas Muthee had laid his hands on her when he visited the church as a guest preacher in late 2005, prior to her successful gubernatorial bid.

I first want to say that I never imagined myself writing on some secular website a story about me not not believing in God anymore. This past year has been hard, but it has also been the most crucial year for shaping the person that I am going to be and am becoming.

"You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?" -- Morpheus

I grew up as an extreme-core fundamentalist, and have been slowing drifting secular since then. In sixth grade, my parents got rid of Aladdin due to Jasmine's inappropriate garb. My church started playing contemporary music in the evening services, and as this form of music is displeasing to God, we changed churches over the issue. Together with being home schooled and highly gifted mathematically, I was not what you would call a normal child.

Conrad, who appeared before the crowd before McCain had arrived, offered a prayer that seemed to urge divine intervention to prevent Barack Obama from winning the presidential election -- and cast the outcome as a referendum on differing religions.

We took up with Brother Vernon Redstart's little band of pilgrims meeting in one end of the Quonset hut, out on the River Pike, where he had his auto repair and salvage business. The Glorified Temple of the Blessed Redeemer. That's where I saw Ronald Coyne, the Man With No Eye. And of all the people that ever frightened the feces out of me, he produced the greatest amount in pure poundage.

The camera closes in on Sarah Palin speaking to young missionaries, vowing from the pulpit to do her part to implement God's will from the governor's office.

What she didn't tell worshipers gathered at the Wasilla Assembly of God church in her hometown was that her appearance that day came courtesy of Alaskan taxpayers, who picked up the $639.50 tab for her airplane tickets and per diem fees.

I'm in a bit of a pissy mood right now, so I thought I'd have a little rant.

Many Christians that visit this site complain how poorly Christians have been treated by atheists; now and throughout history. Most of the responses from rational people have noted that if Christians were indeed persecuted, it was for political reasons and not solely because the persecutor did or did not believe in a god. I agree.

I have been battling this Christianity thing for several years. I am 21 and a married navy wife with a six-month-old daughter. I always thought being a Christian was the "right" thing to do. I have tried so hard to be that good Christian person. I even got married to my husband under the belief I was truly a Christian. Something inside of me really didn't work. My husband is the best in the world and I love him; his family is close knit and all go to the same little country church.

I started taking Christianity serous at the age of six or seven. My father was very involved in the Pentecostal church. My mother was Baptist, but went to my dad's church because that is where my dad's family went. So mom, being very submissive early in the marriage, went along with whatever my dad said.

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion ..." from the Treaty of Tripoli, signed by John Adams, June 10, 1797. The death knell to my Christian faith was sounded in the face of Christian Theonomy /Dominionist /Reconstructionist theology. Christian Reconstructionism seeks to establish the theocratic rule of God over America through political manipulation. Unlike the Baptists who led me to Christ and taught me that Christianity and American politics were forever separated, "The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine." George Washington Reconstructionists and Dominionists taught me that it is the ordained duty of all Christians to aggressively inject religion into every aspect of the political process and into every political, legislative, and judicial decision. I know Reconstructionist Christians who currently hold political office in the Ohio State legislature. Those individuals do not hide their Christianity, but they do veil their overtly theocratic thinking.

For 20 plus years I lived a miserable life. A life of dead end jobs that went nowhere, living with my parents well into my 30s, no seeking school or paid-for training programs unless they were Christ-based, because seeking a career was selfish and not a godly desire. Not seeking a mate or dating because I was to focus only on the Lord and he would provide if it was his will.

I was directed to this website after talking through email with an individual who participates at this sight. In my search for answers to the question of what is the purpose and meaning of this life I am exploring all systems of beliefs found within religion and those not a part of formal religous rites.

Sorry, had to break the ice there. My story isn't that unique to be brutally honest. I'm posting it none the less, because I truly believe there are people out there in that very ugly but necessary phase, where you start to raise serious doubts about your religious convictions, but are simply too afraid to jump off the cliff into the abyss of unbelief. So, I am posting my testimony for them. We all know it's damn (Is swearing permissible here?) hard to finally let go. And it's just that little bit easier if you can relate to others who went through the same situation.

Bill Maher, who has been picking on organized religion for years on his TV shows "Politically Incorrect" and "Real Time," zealously traveled the world for "Religulous," his documentary challenging the validity and value of Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths.

Raised in a Roman Catholic household by a Catholic father and Jewish mother, Maher decided at an early age that the trappings and mythology of the world's religions were preposterous, outdated and even dangerous.

The last year has seen me slowly de-convert from Christianity until, like others, I one day realized I just don't believe it all any more.

I grew up in a loving Christian home, both my parents were active in church. It was to be expected that at the age of 12 I had a "jelly-in-my-legs" experience at a sermon one morning, went forward and gave my heart to Jesus.

There have always been parents who sent their young out to toil in the evangelical fields. I’ve seen children as young as six out on the sawdust trail. I myself preached my first message when I was seven. Peter Popoff was fourteen when he held a revival at the Amalgamated Full Gospel Assembly, a flock of twenty or so under the pastorship of Flora Gilder. Yes, there were women preachers. Holy rollers were very progressive.

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